


miscommunication (or the strangest family ever)

by quietlyintoemptyspaces



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Best Friends, F/M, Falling In Love, Happy Ending, Infidelity, M/M, Unplanned Pregnancy, unhappily married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 03:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietlyintoemptyspaces/pseuds/quietlyintoemptyspaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The name freezes Merlin, even though he keeps telling himself that there’s more than one Arthur in the world, more than one Arthur who’s unhappily married, who shares so many traits with Gwen’s husband, who even looks like the man she has described before on so many occasions. </p>
<p>He drops the cup of tea and it soaks through his shoes, burns his toes. He wonders why he didn’t see it before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	miscommunication (or the strangest family ever)

 

On Merlin’s first day of work he meets Gwen. She’s a lovely girl, sweet as can be, and gently tells him that the New Guy Pranks should come to a cease-fire soon. She was the New Guy before him. It’s not so bad.

 

He’s known her for less than a month, but they gossip and vent to each other as though they’re old friends. He tells her what kind of idiot his last boyfriend was and Gwen jokingly asks if they’re dating the same guy, but then she recants the next day and wonders aloud if he’s the man of her dreams.

 

They have off days and on, Gwen and her boyfriend, like they can’t decide if they love each other that much or not. Merlin just smiles and hugs her in the break room when she comes in with tears in her pretty brown eyes and says that if he was into that sort of thing, he’d totally worship her.

 

One day she comes in glowing, a sparkling ring on her left hand that she flaunts with bashful amazement. It was the most amazing evening, she tells him over coffee. They’re supposed to be working, but the boss never seems to care what they do so long as the work gets done.  Simply beautiful, they’d had dinner in a fancy restaurant with violin’s playing, then they took a stroll through the park and stopped in front of a lighted fountain where he got down on one knee and proposed.

 

It left her breathless, with tears in her eyes as she replayed the scene through her mind, drew it out so that Merlin could share it and wished for his happiness someday too.

 

Despite the fact that the wedding was everything she could have wanted, Gwen was stressed about the details, about the groom’s family, about the invitations, about the flowers, the gown, the shoes… Merlin tells her to relax, take a deep breath, and that he can help her with the dress. He has impeccable taste when it comes to women’s fashion… just not so much with his own.

 

The day before Gwen’s bachelorette party, mere days before the wedding, Merlin meets someone. Well, not so much _meet_ as dump burning hot coffee all over himself and then crash into a golden Adonis who turns out to be a hell of a lot meaner than his looks let on. Merlin calls him a prat, tells him to take care of his own damn dry-cleaning and then bemoans about his rotten luck with men to Gwen who nods solemnly and says simply, “Tell me about it.”

 

The day of the wedding Gwen calls him up on the office phone because she’s taken two weeks off for the honeymoon and the ceremony and she’s nervous. Her hand is gripping her mobile and she’s pacing back and forth in front of mirror. The male stripper was a dream come true, she explains, and she would have totally jumped his bones the other night if not for the fact that she’s getting married today. And she might have let her hand linger a little too long when putting the dollar bill in his leopard-print, bikini-cut, man-panties and there’s a possibility that she might be a little in love with the stripper, which is just stupid because she’s in love-love with the man she’s about to marry, the man who’s still waiting at the alter for his bride, but she’s too nervous, too scared, that she might be making the wrong decision.

 

Merlin doesn’t talk her into it, doesn’t talk her out of it, just smiles and hugs her when she gets back from her honeymoon and cheers her up with tales of his sordid affairs as a single man.

 

A few weeks later he meets the irritating, poncy prat again and wonders if it’s okay to throttle a man he doesn’t even know. But the man just smiles at him, almost mocking, and tilts his head just so. All Merlin can think about is kissing that look right off his stupid, handsome face. But he remembers that he has work in the morning, that this man is stranger, and that they’re standing in the middle of a crowded bar. They end up sharing a drink anyway and then exchange phone numbers before heading their separate ways.

 

They end up going out regularly, to drink, to play cards, and they chat nightly on the phone. One night ends in a kiss, and few nights later it turns into something more. Merlin tells Gwen it’s the best sex he’s ever had. She just smiles, blushes, and he knows there’s something she’s not telling him but he doesn’t press the issue. She’ll tell him when she’s ready.

 

Merlin loves watching Arthur get dressed in the dark when he’s lethargic from sex, loves the way he kisses before he leaves, and loves the way his eyes glint at the promise of what’s to come the next time they meet. Merlin hates the way Arthur frowns down at the ring on his finger, that single golden band that tells them they shouldn’t be doing this, that tells them that Arthur can’t stay the night because he has to go home to his wife and pretend to be happily married.

 

Merlin hates that he wonders when he became the other woman.

 

Then one day Gwen comes in glowing, but it’s a different kind of glow than the one she wore as she presented her ring to the office. This glow comes with morning sickness and bloating and nine months of growing, stretching and preparing for the small thing that’s coming into the world. Merlin tries to congratulate her, but she shakes her head and starts crying and can’t stop. He clears out the break room with a glare, sits her down and makes her some tea because he doesn’t know what else to do.

 

When he turns around to hand her the cup, her wedding band is on the table and in her hands is a silver heart-shaped pendant.

 

“It’s not his,” she says, as she points to the ring, fingers the smooth gold. She sets the necklace beside it, presses the fingers of her other hand to that. “Do you remember that stripper I told you about?”

 

Merlin nods, but he only remembers the underwear she described, has pictured it many times on Arthur and wonders if he can ever talk him into wearing something like that.

 

“I met him again, a little while ago,” she continues. Her eyes are rimmed red but she’s not crying anymore, even has a small smile as she explains further. “He was dressed in real clothes this time, before you ask, and he was as sweet as could be. I didn’t mean for it to go farther that dinner and drinks but I guess these things just happen.”

 

“How do you know it’s not, you know, _his_?” He still doesn’t know why he doesn’t know the name of Gwen’s husband, but he supposes that doesn’t really matter right now.

 

“We haven’t slept together since the honeymoon, Merlin. There’s no way it could be Arthur’s.”

 

The name freezes Merlin, even though he keeps telling himself that there’s more than one Arthur in the world, more than one Arthur who’s unhappily married, who shares so many traits with Gwen’s husband, who even _looks_ like the man she has described before on so many occasions.

 

He drops the cup of tea and it soaks through his shoes, burns his toes. He wonders why he didn’t see it before.

 

“Oh, _God_ ,” Gwen moans, tears starting anew, and for one scary moment, Merlin thinks she’s figured it out too. “I don’t even know what to do.”

 

Merlin tries his best to breath evenly. “Tell him.” He’s not sure what makes him say it, what makes him think it will all work out for the best, but repeats it, for as much her sake as his own. “Tell him. And if he makes a big fuss, tell him you work with me.”

 

There’s a question in her gaze but she doesn’t voice it.

 

It’s almost a month before he hears from Arthur again. It only took Gwen two weeks to stop giving him the silent treatment, but Merlin thinks that’s just because she got sick of seeing him mope around the office. She takes him out for a drink – something strong and a Shirley Temple, respectively – and introduces him to Lancelot with a joke about him stealing her men. But Merlin can tell by the way Lance looks at Gwen that she has nothing to worry about. Besides, her soon to be ex-husband has his heart.

 

Arthur calls him up to bitch, something about how he should have known it was too good to be true, how Merlin was such an idiot that he hadn’t known the best shag of his life was married to his best friend, how divorces were too messy, and there may have been something in there about Lance’s backside but by then Merlin was just ready to hang up the phone.

 

As soon as he does, there’s a loud knock on the door and he opens it only to find Arthur glaring at him. “You hung up on me,” he declares, and stomps into the room without invitation. “You can’t just hang up on me while I’m trying to explain things. It doesn’t work like that.”

 

There’s a fire burning in Arthur’s eyes every time he looks at Merlin and Merlin can barely contain himself, ignores every word pouring out of that fine aristocratic mouth to press his lips there and finally silence Arthur. All Arthur can do is comply, because he’s wrapped around Merlin’s little finger and he doesn’t want it any other way.

 

The next day Merlin tells Gwen that he was wrong about the best sex of his life. Make-up sex is definitely at the top of that list, and pauses for a moment to wonder if it’s going to get awkward between them. But then he reminds himself that he doesn’t care, because Arthur was there when he woke up this morning, was there to share an early shower, to eat breakfast, and then to re-shower because maple syrup was a little too sticky to wear to work.

 

Gwen and Merlin make plans to get together sometime, if not for friendly banter, then to mock Arthur with the fact that they’d both seen him naked.

 

And as Merlin glances down at Gwen’s rounding baby bump, all he can manage to think is _This kid is going to have the strangest family_ ever.

 


End file.
